Social media use and friendship closeness in adolescents’ daily lives: An experience sampling study.

The formation and maintenance of friendship closeness is an important developmental task in adolescence. To obtain insight real-time processes that may underly the development middle adolescence, this preregistered experience sampling study [ESM] investigated effects social media use on closeness. was conducted among 387 adolescents (54% girls; Mage = 14.11 years; 96% Dutch) from different educational tracks (44% lower prevocational secondary education, 31% intermediate general 26% academic preparatory education). Adolescents reported six times per day for 3 weeks their Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat previous hour momentary experiences (126 assessments; 34,930 observations). Multilevel analyses revealed positive between-person associations with WhatsApp Instagram close friends. In contrast, at within-person level, we found small negative overall (with without friends) However, there large heterogeneity person-specific effect sizes For example, association friends ranged β -.745 to .697. These results underline importance acknowledging theories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).